Gingerbread Latte Cake – Gingerbread cake layers with a latte frosting, salted caramel and toffee bits.
Santa Monica Days
There’s a restaurant in Santa Monica I used to frequent with my mom on our “girls’ days” called Cafe Montana. The food was always delicious, but the one thing I looked forward to more than anything was the molasses cookie. It was heavenly. The flavor of the ginger and the molasses was perfectly balanced. The cookie itself was rolled in coarse sugar and had a chewy center texture with an ever-so-slightly crispy edge. It was perfect. The best molasses cookie I’ve ever tasted (and I’ve had my fair share).
Gingerbread Cake
I love using flavors from other desserts as inspiration for cakes, so it was a no-brainer for me to come up with a cake to mimic one of my favorite cookies. The cake recipe is an adaption from a Tessa Huff recipe. I’ve made several of her cakes over the years and have never been disappointed. The first time I made her recipe, I followed her recipe exactly. It’s actually advice I always give new bakers. When learning to bake, I think it’s important to follow recipes exactly the first time so you know how the author wanted the recipe to taste. And then, in round two, three and four, you can start to make changes, but you’ll always have a baseline to compare your versions with.
Latte Frosting
I don’t know what it is, but the first flavor I think to pair with gingerbread is coffee. I don’t actually drink coffee, but I love the flavor in baked goods and the smell of the coffee beans at the grocery store is one of life’s simple pleasures. If you don’t love the flavor of coffee, there are so many other flavor options to pair with gingerbread: lemon, white chocolate, caramel, chocolate.
If you do go with a coffee flavored frosting, you can use regular coffee granules, decaf granules, or even coffee extract.
Video Tutorial
Hope you enjoy this one as much as I do!
Hi Courtney!
Thanks so much for the recipe. Thinking of making it for the holidays. Just a quick question – is the cake more dense or light and fluffy? Looks quite dense from the pictures so thought I’d ask! I usually go for lighter and fluffier cakes but this looks lovely too.
It’s kind of in between – with the molasses in the cake, it makes it a little heavier, chewier, but it’s not like a pound cake texture either.
Thanks, Courtney. You are my hero!
How much fresh ginger? I don’t see it in the recipe.
Sorry, that was a typo and a change I made. No fresh ginger.
Am I reading the recipe and I don’t see where it calls for grated ginger.
Or is it the ground ginger.
I’m so sorry, that’s a typo I need to fix.